Recent and Notable Civil Matters

In September 2011, a $200,000 settlement was reached on the eve of trial on behalf of an ophthalmologist-client who was the victim of an embezzlement scheme perpetrated by his office manager over a three-year period. The lawsuit, instituted in the Nassau County Supreme Court, was brought against the client's accounting firm which failed to detect the embezzlement scheme. Between the settlement monies and restitution imposed in the criminal proceeding against the embezzler, the client will have recovered his total loss appropriating $300,000.

$2,5OO,OOO was recovered for the client upon a jury verdict in a personal injury case where the defendant's vehicle struck the client while riding his bicycle in New York City. The defense conceded liability but claimed the client's injuries (conversion disorder) did not result from the accident. After a hard fought trial before the federal court, the jury found that the injuries were related to the accident.

The Foreign Priest Case charged that our client, an attorney, had defrauded a congregation of foreign priests who had invested retirement funds in Merrill Lynch and in second mortgage loans (handled by our client). The transactions occurred more than thirty years before the trial. The case was instituted eight years ago, and after the priests had obtained a six million dollar settlement from Merrill Lynch. After two trials (the first resulted in a mistrial), the jury found in favor of our client and rejected the priests' demand for an additional three million dollars upon the ground that the priests' claims were previously satisfied by the Merrill Lynch settlement, and that there was an unjustifiable delay in bringing the lawsuit. This was a complex RICO civil action, see Congregation v. Curi, 978 F.Supp. 435.

The Suicide Case was brought against Nassau County and the Nassau County Medical Center alleging that the officials failed to detect that our clients' son was a chronic alcoholic who was being held overnight at the Nassau County jail, based on an assault charge arising out of an argument over his alcoholism. The suicide allegedly resulted from the pain of withdrawal. The decedent, 36 years of age had never held steady employment. During the course of the trial before a jury at the Federal court in Central Islip, the case was settled for $190,000.

The 9/11 Case required the family of the victim, a NYC Police Officer-sharpshooter who was murdered in the WTC, to bring legal action to prevent his former wife from whom he had been legally separated from seeking financial benefits from his death. This required bringing successful actions before the Surrogate in Queens County, the Supreme Court in Manhattan, and an appeal to a higher Court that upheld the court rulings barring the former wife's efforts, and allowing the financial awards to be made to the victim's family.

We defended and resolved claims of price discrimination and commercial bribery by a tobacco industry giant against a local lithographer; our briefs resulted in an important decision on antitrust injury and the role of statistical regression analyses, see Philip Morris Incorporated v. Grinnell Lithographic, 67 F.Supp.2d 166 (E.D.N.Y. 1999).

In a matter involving questions of federal preemption and other issues of first impression in the region, we obtained an appellate reversal on behalf of a local municipality in its dispute with the cruise line that brought off-shore casino gambling to Long Island, and counseled the attorney general of South Carolina on similar issues, see Incorporated Village of Freeport v. Freeport Excursions, LLC, 694 N.Y.S.2d 406 (2d Dept. 1999).

Our defense of a prosecuting attorney in a civil rights action established a Second Circuit decision that stands as a bulwark in the defense of prosecuting officials reinforcing the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity, see Dory v. Ryan, 25 F.3d 679 (2d Cir. 1994).